The present invention relates to a steel strip for cutlery.
At present, martensitic stainless steel, which is widely and generally used for forming cutlery, is given a hardness required as cutlery by a heat treatment of quenching and tempering. Particularly, a high-carbon martensitic stainless steel strip material containing Cr in an amount of about 13% by mass is most commonly used as a material of cutlery.
Heretofore, for this material of cutlery, a variety of proposals have been made. Among these, particularly, a proposal in which Mo is contained for the purpose of achieving both corrosion resistance and high hardness has been made. For example, JP-A-5-117805 discloses an invention directed to a steel alloy containing, in mass %, 0.45 to 0.55% of C, 0.4 to 1.0% of Si, 0.5 to 1.0% of Mn, 12 to 14% of Cr, and 1.0 to 1.6% of Mo, with the balance made up of Fe and unavoidable impurities as a martensitic stainless steel alloy for cutlery having both high corrosion resistance and high hardness.
On the other hand, WO 2012/006043 reports that a bending process is applied to a steel strip for cutlery, and also reports a problem that the cutlery is cracked or fractured during the bending process.
However, current situation is that as for such a bending process, an attempt to obtain favorable bending workability by adjusting the alloy composition has not been made.